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Sunday, July 11, 2010

Spain finally live up to expectations but it wasn’t pretty

Spain has been ranked in the top three spots for what seems like the last decade only to come away with one piece of hardware (08’ European Championship) but now they have the grand prize with their first ever World Cup Championship in an ugly 1-0 game. With all due respect to the Spaniards, it seemed like the Dutch came into the match thinking they might be a little out-manned talent wise top-to-bottom and wanted to physically take control of the match, resulting in a ten yellow cards, and an very slow game. Final game aside, Spain only had eight goals in seven matches, the lowest total on any side ever to win a World Cup. So another WC Final ends 1-0 in anti-climatic fashion which doesn’t do the tournament justice. For a side that was unbeaten in the tournament going into the Final the Dutch certainly looked intimidated from the outset while Spain controlled possession throughout which has their MO, and took the game with another late deciding goal past the 73rd minute for the third time in the tournament. It’s not like Holland didn’t have their chances on offense as Robin simply couldn’t convert on two golden opportunities, and the missed 1-on-1 chance with just him and the goalie will surely haunt him for some time to come. Four years seems like an eternity but if I could be so bold as to make a request (aside from improved officiating) it would be to finally have a final that was the best match of the last four as both semi-final games and the third place game were much more entertaining. What do you think of the 2010 Cup? What was the most impressive/disappointing? In the end how would you rate the US performance, and France and Italy’s lack thereof?View the complete World Cup Schedule HereChat live with fans from both the US and England in the World Cup Live Chat room.